


Dagger

by Basingstoke



Category: Smallville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-12-04
Updated: 2001-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-03 14:23:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Basingstoke/pseuds/Basingstoke





	Dagger

Martha and Jonathan Kent carried the kitchen table past him without even acknowledging his presence. Clark followed with two chairs stacked on each arm. He stopped dead. "Lex."

"Clark. Shouldn't you be in Metropolis?"

"Shouldn't *you*?" Clark carried the chairs to the moving van and set them down hard enough that they sunk into the brown grass of the lawn. "But I guess you wanted some extra gloating time."

"Don't be ridiculous. I'd much prefer that your parents stay on to manage the farm. I've always thought that with a little extra capital, this farm would do very well."

Jonathan stepped out of the van. "We're not living in your house and we're not managing your farm. We lost it, you bought it, and that is *that.*" He spat at Lex's feet and stomped back into the house. Martha followed him, looking daggers at Lex. He hadn't realized the woman could *be* that angry.

"It didn't have to be this way," Lex said calmly, loud enough for all of them to hear.

"Jesus, Lex, of course it did! You think you can just buy our lives?" Clark shouted. "It's like *you're* the alien! Don't you *get* it? You can't buy loyalty and you can't buy pride!"

"I know what I can and can't buy. Better than you, I think."

"Then why do you keep doing this stuff? All this--this scheming and this deal-making and all these crummy businesses you run--the *houses* you buy, those are people's *lives,* and you treat it like it's nothing! *Why?*"

There were tears in Clark's eyes. And Lex realized then that Clark knew he knew that Clark was Superman. It had always been personal: when Superman ruined an acquisition over some paper-tiger ideal, when he stopped an eviction regardless that the family hadn't paid rent in three months, when he ruined revolutionary experimental gene-modified crops, when he fused shut the doors of a factory so that replacement workers couldn't cross the picket line--every time, Clark was showing him the kind of man Clark thought Lex should have been.

Lex wasn't that man. Nobody *could* be that man--there were too many ideals, and too many of them contradicted each other. But Clark had stars in his eyes and couldn't see.

"I have always done what I thought was right," Lex said.

Clark shook his head, begging with his eyes for an answer Lex couldn't give.

"I'm a businessman. I could have been much, much worse." A chill settled in his stomach. The look on Clark's face ought to hurt him, he thought--but he barely felt anything at all.

"I don't see how." Jonathan stood behind him holding a lamp.

Lex turned and regarded Jonathan Kent.

Lex was a patient and cold-blooded man. He let insults roll over him without impacting. But he wasn't a saint and he only had so many cheeks to turn.

The irritated resentment inside him flared suddenly into hate.

Jonathan Kent didn't see how he could be any worse. "You will," Lex said softly, and walked away.

Lex unlocked his car door with the push of a button, pausing beside it. Clark stood with his fists clenched helplessly; his father stood beside him. Martha was silhouetted in the doorway of the house her grandfather built. "It occurs to me that my advisors were right," Lex said. "This would be an excellent location for the new housing development. I'll send the bulldozers over after I take possession tomorrow."

He drove away.

On the way back to his castle, he checked the mirrors frequently, expecting the familiar flash of motion that meant Clark was following him; but the mirrors were empty, and so was the look on his face. Funny. He expected to look different somehow.

*

He'd given up on shot glasses and was drinking vodka from the bottle. Two-thirds gone and he still wasn't drunk, damn it. Just indolent.

Someone stood over him where he lay on the couch. "Lex."

"Mm?"

"You're setting a bad example for my son."

Lex pried his eyes open. "Hello, Bruce. Hello, Jason. Uncle Lex is attempting to get plastered. Don't follow my example."

"Vodka sucks," Jason said. "Beer is way better. Wine is best. Can I see your horses?"

"I haven't got any horses here. But you're welcome to..." Lex waved the vodka bottle. "Anything."

"Stay out of trouble!" Bruce said, but Jason had already run out of the room. Bruce sighed. "Lex, what are you doing? You don't drink."

"I don't drink because I can't get drunk. I can't get high either, did you know that? It makes life oppressive sometimes."

"Why can't you get drunk or high?" Bruce knelt beside Lex and took the bottle away, rubbing Lex's hand in his instead.

Lex rolled his head on the sofa cushion. "I can't get sick."

"You look a little drunk." Bruce glanced at the three-quarters-empty vodka bottle.

"Yes, I drank all that myself, just now. I don't think I feel drunk. I could hug you, though." Lex smiled.

Bruce paused. "All right." He sat carefully sideways on the couch, squeezing his hips in beside Lex's. His hands were warm and rough as he pulled Lex upright.

Rough hands... hard hands. Bruce was a fighter too. Lex had soft hands with a pen callus, for all that he had tried to be athletic. He'd tried to be... lots of things. And he'd given them all up to go with what he was best at--being ruthless, and being successful.

Lex rested his head on Bruce's chest. Hard muscle, hard hands. Bruce had been a soft young man--but everyone grew up.

"Why are you drinking, Lex?"

"I'm toasting...change. Things change, Bruce, have you noticed that? People change." Lex burrowed closer to Bruce, wrapping his arms around Bruce's waist. If he could burrow right into Bruce's heart, would he find the piece that made him kind? That ephemeral quality that made him risk his life every night for the good of his city?

He didn't understand that. He built and improved cities, but he didn't have that drive to protect the people in it. Nobody protected him; he didn;t see why anyone else should have any greater right to a peaceful life.

But Bruce cradled him in his arms and oh, God, it felt good. Being held and rocked and petted...

Weak. He was being weak. His conscience barked at him in his father's voice. Lex straightened up and kissed Bruce, making it sex instead.

"Mmph. I could get drunk from your mouth, Lex," Bruce said.

Lex smiled. "How purple of you."

"No, literally." Bruce pushed Lex back and petted his head. "I'm not--sleeping with you. Not this time."

"That's fine," Lex said. He felt less at ease, less happy. The gnawing feeling of cold was back in his stomach.

"I want to, but Jason is here and I have to leave soon."

Lex liked Bruce better in his pre-Batman days. He wasn't so sensible then. "That's *fine,* Bruce." Lex scrambled off the couch. He didn't feel drunk in the slightest.

He crossed to the balcony, looking at the orchard below. All those trees, and none of them would survive if not for the extensive irrigation. LuthorCorp designed the irrigation system and sold it to grateful farmers around the world.

They were mulched and fertilized with special LuthorCorp products to optimize the growth of the tree and the size of the fruit. They were harvested by ordinary men, but he was working on that... he just needed to design the right machinery.

Good, useful products. Products that made the lives of everyone a little easier and more pleasant.

Cold ate through his belly.

Bruce wrapped his arms around Lex from behind, warming him again. Still a friend. He still had a friend he could count on.

Lex opened the doors of the balcony and they stood there, half in, half out, smelling the dry wood-smoke-and-leaves scent of the fall air. Squirrels ran over the rooftop overhead and crows argued in the treetops. A hawk sat on a telephone pole in the distance.

"Tell me what's troubling you, Lex."

Lex shook his head. "It's already dealt with." The bulldozers would be returning to his other construction site now, leaving nothing but a tidy square of earth rife with promise.

"Not very well, I don't think."

Lex leaned his head back on Bruce's shoudler. "It's just... this town, Bruce. We virtually built it, my father and me, but they despise us. Without us it wuld be another nothing prairie hamlet. But here..." Lex closed his eyes. "Here I'll always be the villain."

"Ah." Bruce held him close. "If it helps, I don't think you're a villain."

Lex smiled. "Thank you."

Bruce shifted. "Look, there's Jason. Who's he riding with?"

Jason was sitting before a dark-haired woman on a quarter horse. "Lana Lang."

"Better see what he's done," Bruce said, and he pulled away to go downstairs. Lex followed reluctantly.

"Bruce! Everything looks weird here. It's all flat. I ran out to see how far I could see and I ran into her," Jason said as Bruce handed him down. Lex stuck his hands in his pockets and looked at Lana.

Lana returned his gaze. "We rode out to the Kent farm," Lana said.

Lex smiled slightly.

"You're despicable," Lana said. Bruce and Jason looked at Lex, puzzled, as Lana reined her horse around and cantered down the drive.

The cold gnawed at his heart and Lex let it in.


End file.
